Once again, you find yourself suppressing the urge to groan aloud, instead settling for a slow blink and a heavy, soul-wearied sigh. Eryndor is at it again. Crown Prince Eryndor Lucaneth Silverfall—the glittering jewel of the empire, the sword of its future, and your relentless, uninvited shadow.

It has been a bit since Truck-kun claimed your life at the pedestrian crossing outside your favorite ramen shop. You remember the chill of impact, the brief blur of pain. When you awoke, it was not in the warm embrace of an afterlife, but in the finely embroidered nursery of House Virellian, daughter to the Iron Duke and villainess of a tale you knew far too well.

Reincarnated into a third-rate romantic epic you’d once read. You remembered it well: the heroine, an orphan from the slums, sweet and meek; the prince, emotionally scarred and drawn to her innocence; and the cursed fiancée, the scheming noble girl doomed to fall to ruin and die by the prince’s hand in a fit of poetic justice. All due to a tragic misunderstanding.

Your father—the duke, ever a patriot—forced you into the company of the young prince. Your plan had been to remain quiet, forgettable, and eventually flee to the countryside once the heroine appeared. But the more time you spent near Eryndor, the more unsettlingly fixated he became.

At sixteen, he no longer looks like the idealistic child from the novel. He has become something brighter next to you. You? You, thirteen, playing the role of a bright, fluttering noble girl with grace and poise. It is an exhausting masquerade, but your life quite literally depends on it.

Today is the Summer Solstice Festival, held in the opulent gardens of the palace. A gathering meant for the nobility’s younger generation to “socialize” and “cultivate proper bonds”—or, truthfully, to matchmake like hounds circling meat.

You stand amidst a circle of tittering heirs and powdered daughters, each performing civility as if their titles depended on it. You laugh lightly at something inane, fingers brushing your temple as if to ward off a headache. One boy—a viscount’s son with more pride than sense—too long at your side. His glances have grown bolder. You do not need to guess what he will say next.

You begin to extend your hand, your intent to rebuff him gently, politely—your rehearsed rejection perched on your tongue. The engagement ring on your finger glints in the sun, burning reminder of your tether.

But before you can speak, the boy’s expression freezes. The charming blush drains from his cheeks, his spine stiffens, and he recoils as if you had drawn a blade instead of your hand. Confused, you glance past your shoulder.

Eryndor.

Tall and immaculate, hand braced casually beside your head. His posture is relaxed—but his expression is anything but. Eyes, rare shade of silver only born into the royal line, burn with thinly veiled malice. The matching ring on his finger flashes like a warning flare as it catches the sun.

“Are you blind?” he asks, voice low and glacial, each word coated in iron. “She is already wed.” Not betrothed. Not promised. Wed.

The boy stammers, stepping back, murmuring some apology before vanishing into the crowd as though chased by wolves. Around you, the atmosphere shifts. Other children pretend to chat, but you can feel their attention tilt, like flowers toward sunlight—or in this case, toward the storm cloud that is Eryndor.

This is not how the tale was supposed to unfold.

By now, he should have slipped away from this suffocating garden party, escaped your ‘obsessive’ towards him behavior, and stumbled into the slums, cloaked and brooding. That was where he was supposed to meet her—the heroine. The orphan with eyes full of stars and dirt beneath her fingernails. She was meant to steal his breath and his heart with a single glance. He was meant to whisk her away, protect her, and forget you.

But here he stands, rooted at your side, not in the streets where fate once guided him, but beside you. And the story, as you once knew it, no longer belongs to the heroine.